# The Ocean return with Solaris, a 70-minute meditation on exploration and extinction **New Music** — On Your Markus **Published:** 25 September 2026 **Author:** Markus Hamence **Source:** https://onyourmarkus.au/new-music-releases/the-ocean-solaris/ German atmospheric post-metal band The Ocean will release their twelfth studio album, Solaris, on September 25 via Pelagic Records. The 70-minute album marks a return to the cinematic, crushing sound of landmarks like Pelagial and Phanerozoic, with an expanded international lineup and new vocalist Enrico Tiberi, and features collaboration with Tangerine Dream synth pioneer Thorsten Quaeschning on the electronic closing piece "Milk of My Dreams," inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 film of the same name and thematically exploring the psychological costs of exploration against a backdrop of human-caused extinction. --- Berlin atmospheric post metal visionaries **The Ocean** will release their twelfth studio album, ***Solaris***, on September 25 via Pelagic Records. *Solaris* follows 2023's *Holocene* and marks the beginning of a new chapter for the band, introducing an expanded international lineup while returning to the cinematic, crushing sound that made albums like *Pelagial* and *Phanerozoic *modern progressive metal landmarks.  Following from [Light Pollution](https://us.list-manage.com/wMz2XdhoJvq?e=c982cfcc7a&c2id=8df4eb0d792325807e8f2eb2abb2bd4e), **[Belligerence](https://us.list-manage.com/zNzaMJ0C0ms?e=c982cfcc7a&c2id=8df4eb0d792325807e8f2eb2abb2bd4e)**** and** **[Ultima Esperanza](https://us.list-manage.com/vBmxn1XdSC6?e=c982cfcc7a&c2id=8df4eb0d792325807e8f2eb2abb2bd4e)****, **the band return with** ** **Thorsten Quaeschning** of **Tangerine Dream** for, *Milk of My Dreams.* "*Milk of My Dreams* is the second half of the 20-minute closing piece of The Ocean’s new and 12th studio album *Solaris*, inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky’s film of the same name." Entirely electronic, dark, hypnotic and danceable, it leads the Berlin-based heavy music collective into unfamiliar terrain, trading weight for pulse without losing any of its intensity. It closes the album’s 70-minute monolith on an unexpected note: alien yet coherent, disorienting yet strangely inevitable. ![Symmetrical geometric illustration of a stylised figure with radiating lines, three stacked burgundy circles, and cream background.](https://media.onyourmarkus.au/admin/2026/09/38787a19-13ef-454c-866e-67957ea3086b.jpg) While most of the instrumental foundations of *Solaris* were written during the pandemic, *Milk of My Dreams* is a much more recent piece, composed last year as the band began recording vocals for the album. New vocalist Enrico Tiberi wrote much of the track as a series of variations on musical themes introduced in the preceding song, *Ultima Esperanza*. Rearranged by Robin Staps and shaped by significant contributions from synth pioneer and Tangerine Dream bandleader Thorsten Quaeschning, the track became a distinctly collaborative and experimental undertaking — and may well mark the beginning of a broader creative relationship with Quaeschning. The band first met Quaeschning while tracking drums at Berlin’s legendary Hansa Studios, where David Bowie recorded *“Heroes.”* They later spent a week at Quaeschning’s studio in Berlin-Rudow, working not only on *Milk of My Dreams* but on the electronic dimension of the album as a whole. The band comments: *“Working with Thorsten has been an incredibly inspiring experience and with all of us being huge Tangerine Dream fans, a great honour of course. His knowledge of electronic music, synthesizers and sound design is extraordinary, and at the same time he’s an immensely talented and curious musician. His studio feels like a synthesizer museum — everything is connected, switched on and ready to play. What’s particularly remarkable is his ability to take a sound you can only describe in words and translate it almost instantly into something you can actually hear.”* [Watch on YouTube](https://youtu.be/FgBsVDqgJi4?si=7l-PI4FyPPKlJpD3) Thorsten Quaeschning says about his collaboration with The Ocean:  *“It was a real pleasure to work on the new album by The Ocean Collective. At the same time, it was an interesting challenge for me, because I had to adjust some of my usual working methods and leave the safe harbour of familiar procedures. From my own musical microcosm, The Ocean Collective’s music moves through a wide range of shifting time signatures, which meant that most hardware step sequencers no longer worked in the conventional way.* *Of course, I could have programmed and recorded individual sections of two, three or sometimes eight bars, but I decided to play many of the sequences by hand. This made it possible to react more quickly to the time signature changes, while also giving the sequences a more organic feel through dynamics, touch and subtle timing differences. I’m very happy to be part of this album and I’m looking forward to seeing where this new collaboration may lead.”* *Solaris* is the name of an intelligent ocean in Andrey Tarkovsky’s 1972 film, and combines the dystopian sci-fi storytelling with existential contemplation inspired by the journals and records of historic explorers of past centuries like Magellan, Sir Francis Drake or Amundsen. It asks questions of those among us who are seekers; what is the psychological cost of being so driven? What is the tipping point between exploring new terrains and dominating them for our own gain? Can exploration be redefined to be conceived as a process of silent observation, documentation and learning, rather than bequeathing our own ideas and values on others? The album serves as a critique of the underlying motives and psychological dispositions of an explorative mindset and a thirst for power. It is an existential questioning, a probe of reason of the general purpose of technological advance, in the specific light of the destruction of our habitat. It's a dystopian outlook into a future where Earth has become uninhabitable – not despite, but as a direct consequence of human intelligence, as the foundation of technological advance. **SOLARIS TRACK LISTING** 52°30'11" N, 13°26’12“ E Departure Song [Light Pollution](https://us.list-manage.com/DkQfVsZQIi8?e=c982cfcc7a&c2id=8df4eb0d792325807e8f2eb2abb2bd4e) Simulacra [Belligerence](https://us.list-manage.com/55a6tjhnMFt?e=c982cfcc7a&c2id=8df4eb0d792325807e8f2eb2abb2bd4e) [Ultima Esperanza](https://us.list-manage.com/12S8iDIDhhl?e=c982cfcc7a&c2id=8df4eb0d792325807e8f2eb2abb2bd4e) [Milk Of My Dreams](https://us.list-manage.com/lzRGHR1MucA?e=c982cfcc7a&c2id=8df4eb0d792325807e8f2eb2abb2bd4e) 51°28'30" S, 73°6'11” W ***Solaris***** will be released on September 25 via Pelagic Records.** Pre-orders are available now: **[https://orcd.co/theocean-solaris](https://orcd.co/theocean-solaris)** Merch, Bundles and Boxsets available here **[wildthingmusic.com/collections/the-ocean](http://wildthingmusic.com/collections/the-ocean)**** ** **DISCOGRAPHY** Fogdiver (2003) • Fluxion (2004) • Aeolian (2006) • Precambrian (2007) • Heliocentric (2010) • Anthropocentric (2010) • Pelagial (2013) • Phanerozoic I (2018) • Phanerozoic II (2020) • Holocene (2023) **The Ocean are** Robin Staps – guitar, vocals  Mattias Hägerstrand - bass Jordi Farré – drums, percussion  Enrico Tiberi – vocals, keys Lane Shi – vocals Emmanuel Jessua – guitar Marco Gennaro – guitar In addition, the following musicians performed on this record: Thorsten Quaeschning – keys Orestis Zafiriou – keys Simen Eifring – trombone Jiawei Zhang – vibraphone **Follow The Ocean** **[Web](https://us.list-manage.com/3B4uslv2Xy7?e=c982cfcc7a&c2id=8df4eb0d792325807e8f2eb2abb2bd4e)**** | ****[Facebook](https://us.list-manage.com/H422ni4yGtA?e=c982cfcc7a&c2id=8df4eb0d792325807e8f2eb2abb2bd4e)**** | ****[Twitter](https://us.list-manage.com/QRtEpZBFKod?e=c982cfcc7a&c2id=8df4eb0d792325807e8f2eb2abb2bd4e)**** | ****[Instagram](https://us.list-manage.com/w19lYSgSglt?e=c982cfcc7a&c2id=8df4eb0d792325807e8f2eb2abb2bd4e)** ![Man with shoulder-length hair wearing a dark blazer against a neutral brown background.](https://media.onyourmarkus.au/admin/2026/09/9e264c03-094d-4fbc-888e-e22698c09332.jpg)